The most pertinent issues facing computer safety and cybercrime are internet money scams, fraudulent use of credit cards, debit cards, and other financial identity theft, the sabotaging of critical infrastructure, and stealing of intellectual property. This summary will briefly describe examples of each of these cybercrimes as well as outline the most pressing threat currently as well as the infrastructure that is in place to fight these crimes.
Internet money scams that arrive in a myriad of different forms are rife throughout the cyber world. Fake prize sweepstakes, fictitious jobs online, and charities that don't exist are just a few of the internet scams that are present online. An example I will give is a job that a relative of mine was duped into believing he had obtained online. The job required for him to serve as a de facto broker of sorts for an international art gallery. His alleged job was supposed to require him to transfer money that was appropriated for the art. He would receive an amount in his bank account of 3000-5000 in a cashiers' check and would be required to allow the check to be deposited in his account.
After the check was deposited he would transfer 3/4ths of the check and keep the rest for payment. He was required to send the 4300 to a location in Eastern Europe. The caveat is that the check that he received bounced and was a fake; therefore, he was on the hook with his bank for the entire $5000 dollars and the criminals subsequently received $4300 for their fraud. Many scams like this occur every day in America and around the world.
Identity theft is the number one crime in the cyber world today. Identity thieves have a myriad of ways to illegally obtain someone's identity either through lapses of internet security, theft of identity documents, or rifling through trash to obtain bank statements or other statements that have important information that is necessary for identity thieves. After obtaining the information, thieves are able to cultivate false identities and obtain monetary funds, purchase goods, and ruin people's financial lives. This is currently a huge problem and an example would be a large scale based operation that specializes in stealing social security cards to create false identities and obtain credit cards under these false identities. Once the cards have been obtained, thieves can purchase tens of thousands of merchandise online illegally.
The use of sabotage for disrupting entire infrastructures in countries is a pressing threat regarding cybercrime. Many countries are concerned about the possibility of bugs and other viruses being used as a new form of warfare to disable computer systems or disrupt financial solvency within a country. An example that is widely known is the use of internet sabotage by the United States and Israel to disrupt Iran's nuclear program.
The final cybercrime that will be discussed is intellectual property and the theft of intellectual property. Many artists such as musicians and academics have raised the alarm over the growing popularity of intellectual property theft. Cases such as Napster were the first to highlight the growing capability of internet crimes that occur as a result of people who choose to illegally enable downloads of music that is copyrighted. A more recent case was the placing of hundreds of thousands of JSTOR academic journals on a free site by a MIT hacker. The case gained wide acclaim because of the subsequent suicide of the hacker prior to his trial for stealing the intellectual property.
The crime most pressing for citizens and those who are users of cyber technology is identity theft. This can occur to anyone and has resulted in millions of people becoming financially ruined. The internet enables criminals' anonymity and this crime has become increasingly easy due to low security protections for people who use their credit and debit cards online to make purchases.
The government has rudimentary defenses against most of the cybercrime today aside from the sabotaging of major infrastructures, which is a national priority. Other cybercrimes mentioned in this report are primarily the responsibility of the individual because internet scams and identity theft occur primarily at the behest of people who become victims when they let their guards down. The intellectual property theft has been addressed by Congress and the federal government with new laws created to appropriate for the onslaught of Information Technology.